Having devoted considerable time and attention to the genres of weird fiction and science fiction,[2] it is perhaps long overdue that I should spend some time considering the remaining one of the Three Disreputable Genres,[3] detective fiction. Read more …

I’m feeling a quantum of disappointment with the latest James Bond movie Spectre. But maybe my expectations were unreasonably high. The last Bond movie, Skyfall, was one of the very best. And Spectre has two of the most artful and enticing trailers ever produced (here and here). With such a buildup, maybe I was doomed to disappointment.

James Bond overheard pouring his heart out to a bartender, while downing his sixth vodka martini: “Aside from the torture devices, the explosions, the mindless, soulless, robotic minions, and the miles and miles of stainless steel, there’s one thing that still haunts me about Blofeld’s hellish world, one thing I can’t get out of my bloody nostrils: that godawful litter box smell!” Read more …

Eventually someone pointed out that there is a law in New York State prohibiting the exploitation of “U.N.” or “United Nations” for commercial purposes, so “U.N.C.L.E.” had to be given a meaning. Read more …

On August 14th, Warner Bros. will release its big-screen adaptation of a television series most moviegoers under the age of 60 have never even heard of: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 1964-1968). Read more …

“The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders — all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Read more …

Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth — and the best — Mad Max movie directed by George Miller. Miller was born George Miliotis — the son of Greek refugees from Turkish ethnic cleansing in Anatolia — and is also the creator of two other, and very different, film franchises, the Babe the talking pig movies and the Happy Feet animated penguin movies.

In Fury Road, the title character, which heretofore has been played by Mel Gibson, is played by Tom Hardy (Bane — with another grill thing on his face, no less). Read more …

Beyond the Bush is the third release from Ann Sterzinger’s Hopeless Books, and the first not from her own pen. Like Sterzinger’s own The Talkative Corpse [1] it reveals its Chicago origins by the frequent use of various derivatives of ‘jag-off’, and one might be tempted to christen it part of a ‘jag off lit’ movement, did it not sound so entirely like I was dismissing it as desultory and self-indulgent. Read more …

My introduction to James Bond wasn’t through the movies, but through a book I checked out of the local library when I was a boy—Anglo-Scots Ian Fleming’s Gilt-Edged Bonds (1961), a collection containing Casino Royale, From Russia with Love, and Doctor No. The opening scene of Doctor No (1958) made a powerful impression on me in those pre-race conscious days. Read more …

One of my guiltier pleasures is the “Matt Helm” films of the 1960s. There were four of these, all produced by Irving Allen and starring Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. The first (The Silencers) appeared in 1966. The story behind these films is an interesting one. In the 1950s Irving Allen was partnered with Albert R. (“Cubby”) Broccoli. Things came to an end, however, when Broccoli announced that he was interested in purchasing the film rights to the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. Read more …

Boldly going where no man has gone before: television's first interracial kiss on "Star Trek"

When most people see whites dating non-whites, the immediate assumption is that there is something wrong with the white. Usually the defects are obvious. We know why a homely or obese white woman is sleeping with blacks or Mexicans: They are willing to overlook her faults because she is white. Read more …